The ABC of media

Justin Welby will be the new Archbishop of Canterbury. Hopefully, he'll be better with the media than his predecessor.

Rowan Williams didn't set the bar very high. It seemed he opened his mouth just to be misunderstood.

I remember one controversy a few years ago over whether he had advocated sharia law. It was not clear whether that was his fault or the media's. But that was the way with much of the public Rowan Williams, he was not clear.

So it was a surprise to see the headline that Williams had given his successor a lesson on the media.

Actually, by all accounts, the Archbishop-designate did quite well in his first media conference. The Guardian thought so, as did the BBC. The Daily Mail reported a later stunt, which I would urge him not to repeat. The media already thinks Christians are ridiculous, let's not give them the photo to prove it.

The story of Welby's appointment didn't cause much of a ripple here, proving Archbishop Jensen's point that recent events have "diminished its (the post of Archbishop of Canterbury) significance in the worldwide Anglican Communion."

The other big story was the Royal Commission on child abuse and the fact that it was widened from the Catholic Church to include other denominations and institutions.

One of the best comment pieces I saw was from Gerard Henderson in the SMH. Worth reading.